Chocolate cake

The problem with angels is the wings. And these days they don’t need to be feathery; small tattooed wings are just as dangerous.

A pair ran up to me in Monot and urged me to come in for a drink. The angel was a vision, and very clearly intoxicated.

‘Yes! Go!’ screamed my editor through the phone. And you don’t argue with angels, or sober editors.

The pub was crowded and loud, and there was chocolate involved. I know this because cake was rammed into my mouth before I sat down, and threatened to stop my breathing. It was someone’s birthday apparently.

Two hours and many drinks later I’d forgotten why I went to Monot (nightlife reviews for the magazine). Somewhere between her incoherent babble, lingering stares and the chocolate kiss she left on my notebook I was enthralled. And I fully blame the chocolate.

It may appear innocent enough, but chocolate was once drunk from solid gold, single-use goblets and hailed as the wine of the gods. And it has not forgotten this.

It smeared its way through history, occasionally rearing its pretty head to kill a canine, invent the microwave or fatten up an unsuspecting American. It caused acne then cleared it up, baked muffins, upset the Catholic Church and asserted control over 40% of the world’s almonds and 20% of the world’s peanuts. I’m one of those peanuts.

All this would have been tolerable had Richard Cadbury taken a very cold shower on that dreaded Tuesday afternoon in 1861. But hygiene had to wait, he was busy designing the first heart-shaped chocolate box. In seven years another Cadbury nut named John began mass producing this evil in a ribbon. Nothing could stop it now.

From the chocolate feather corset in the New York Chocolate Show – it has its own shows, people – to the Debailleul chocolate Mercedes A-Class (1:1 scale) in the Brussels Chocolate Passion show, to the Paco Rabanne designer dress in the Paris Chocolate Show, the former drink of the gods has become a shrewd marketing expert. It still makes cake though, and sometimes tries to choke writers.

It also makes chocolate angels, but you can bite their wings off.